


Life Imitates Art

by kisahawklin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: First Time, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:38:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie's a Destiel fan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Imitates Art

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clavally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clavally/gifts).



> Written for the lovely clavally's prompt of "Cas meets Charlie for the first time and she becomes an instant Destiel shipper." I needed to do something while I waited for the damn premiere, and this was it.

It’s not that he isn’t used to the sound of keyboards going all the time. Sam is always looking up something or other on the internet – but it’s sporadic bursts of noise and then silence, or thoughtful hmmmm-ing. With Charlie, it’s a non-stop barrage of keystrokes. Not necessarily loud – her keyboard doesn’t clack even as much as Sam’s – but incessant. The sheer relentlessness of it is enough to make him want to rip his ears off.

"What are you _doing_ over there?" 

Charlie looks up at him with huge eyes, biting her lip. That can't be good. 

"You better not be hacking into some super-secret government agency," Dean says. He raises an eyebrow at her just to be sure she gets the message. The relief on her face is not at all what he'd been expecting, so he frowns at her.

"Oh, don't scowl at me, Dean Winchester," she says, smiling. She's always smiling. It's nice to have someone hanging around that remembers how to. "I'm not going to do anything that will bring the government down on your batcave."

"Then what _are_ you doing?" he asks again, but before he even finishes the question, Cas stumbles out from the hallway that leads to their sleeping rooms and Charlie turns her smile on him. 

"Good morning, Castiel," she says, ridiculously perky. She's blushing a little, too, which is suddenly confusing for him; he's seen her with women, she's clearly not into dudes, but she's acting all _weird_ at Cas. Damn it! If she has a crush on Castiel, he's going to go shoot them both to save himself the trouble of spraining his eyeballs when he rolls them too hard.

"Good morning," Cas answers politely, not even realizing that anything might be off. "Good morning, Dean." 

Dean frowns again, trying to figure out when this turned into _Leave It to Beaver_. Cas shuffles through the room and toward the kitchen, obviously content with their morning greetings. 

Charlie's grinning as she starts typing again, the crazy speed of her fingers making him want to break something. "Do not tell me you have a crush on Cas," Dean says. His life is complicated enough right now, the last thing he wants to do is deal with his not-little sister's crush on a not-angel and related possible sexual identity crisis.

"Of course not," Charlie says, continuing to type, completely unperturbed by his line of questioning. "He's not my type." She looks up at him and her grin twists sideways, turns a little sly. "He is pretty dreamy, though."

Dean can't even imagine what the hell she means by that, and before he can ask, Sam and Cas come out of the kitchen with breakfast. Sam's got the plates of eggs, bacon, and cut fruit, and Cas is carrying a thermos of coffee, a bottle of orange juice, and a jug of milk. He sets the drinks down and says, "I'll go get dishes."

"I'll help," Charlie says, closing her laptop and jumping up. She grins over her shoulder at Dean.

"Okay," he whispers to Sam as they two of them practically skip off to the kitchen, "what the hell?" 

Sam looks up at him from where he's arranging the food in the middle of the table. "What?"

"Charlie. Cas. What's going on there?"

Sam looks at him, that blank sort of look that he's perfected when he knows something but doesn't want to let Dean in on it. 

"What?" Dean asks. "What is it? Does she like dudes now?"

"Cas isn't a guy," Sam answers, and Dean rolls his eyes. "What?" Sam shakes his head at Dean, the disappointed, _I can't believe you're my brother_ headshake. "He isn't. Just because he's _wearing_ a guy right now does not mean that he's actually male."

"Yes, fine," Dean concedes, because really, Sam can get annoying about the details if you let him. "But he's wearing a dude-suit right now, so Charlie shouldn't be interested, right?"

Sam grins at Dean, and suddenly he's left wondering if he's the only person around here not on happy pills. "She isn't." 

Charlie and Cas come out of the kitchen before Dean can press the issue. He grabs the mug Cas offers him with more force than strictly necessary, apologizing and letting Cas pour his coffee when he looks all hurt about it.

Sam and Charlie just keep grinning at him, and pretty soon he's going to stab those smiles off their faces.

They eat in silence, Sam and Cas reading different parts of the paper and Charlie skimming something on her laptop. She's smiling again, blushing a little, and glancing across the table at Cas and Dean occasionally. She seems satisfied, closing the laptop and settling down to really dig into her food – a pile of cut fruit and a spoonful of eggs. She snags a half-eaten piece of bacon off Sam's plate. 

"Get your own," Sam says, without looking up from the paper or trying to stop her. There isn't any left on the plate in the middle of the table; they'd divided it up while Charlie was finishing up whatever manifesto she was typing.

"You snooze, you lose," Charlie answers, crunching her prize loudly. "Besides, you don't even like bacon."

That's blasphemy, but Sam doesn't seem inclined to disagree with her. Dean reaches over to steal his other two pieces and Cas slaps his hand. He pulls it back in surprise. 

"You've had enough," Cas says. 

Dean's mouth drops open involuntarily and he stares at Cas for a second. He recovers enough to say, "You're not the boss of me," and reaches across the table again. 

Cas immediately tries to intercept him. "Dean," he says, and Dean's sure he would have a very logical and boring-sounding argument against bacon, but he's ready for Cas this time, and he grabs Cas's wrist and pins it to the table at the same time he stretches out his other hand. Sam slides his plate just out of reach and Dean ends up overreaching and sprawled across the table, half in the fruit and eggs with Cas's hand trapped underneath him.

Even Cas is grinning at him as he stands up and scrambled eggs plop to the floor off the front of his shirt. The three of them all look way too amused, and he stomps off to shower and change, wondering when he turned into the pissy Winchester.

~~~

Sam's alone in the main room when he comes back, typing away on something or other, sounding weirdly like Charlie. Dean sits down with the paper Sam'd been reading, looking for anything he might have marked as related to their angel problem. 

"Where'd the wonder twins go?" Dean asks, unaccountably nervous about how well Charlie and Cas are getting along after only meeting yesterday.

"Supply run," Sam answers, still typing away. It's not quite Charlie-like, he'll go for a while, huff a little, something that sounds almost like a laugh, probably closer than anything he's heard out of Sam in a couple years, and then more typing. "We're out of beer and laundry detergent."

"It doesn't bother you?" Dean asks, and Sam smiles down at his computer, a little soft around the edges, and Dean's pretty sure it's actually for him, but Sam knows him well enough to keep whatever it is to himself.

"Don't see why it should," Sam says. "Whatever makes them happy, you know?" He shrugs and types something else, a brief flash of clickety-clack and then silence as he goes back to peering at the screen.

"Yeah, but," Dean starts. He doesn't even really know what his argument is, except that it feels all wrong. Sam looks up at him inquisitively, like he might actually be willing to hear Dean out for once. Dean sighs. "Ah, never mind. You're probably right."

Sam smiles at him again, but this one is a little sad, a lot more like the kind of smiles he's been getting the last few years and a lot less like the guileless one he got earlier this morning. It twists something in his chest that whatever is between them is broken like this now, and that Charlie and Cas seem to get Sam's carefree happiness, but not Dean. Too much between them after all these years, he supposes, he can't really blame Sam after all he's been through.

"You deserve to be happy too, Dean," Sam says, the sad smile still wavering at the edges of Sam's mouth. "You don't have to always be the martyr."

That's rich, considering the state of Sam since the trials. All he wants is for his brother to be whole again, Cas to be an angel again, and things to stop getting screwed up on such a global scale. Part of him longs for the simplicity of hunting vengeful spirits and wendigos, nothing bigger than the asshole demon that killed his mom. 

Sam laughs out loud suddenly, a long string of chuckles that turn into a real laugh that he can't stop, even though he seems to want to. His eyes are shiny like he might actually cry from laughing so hard. "Oh man," he says, typing a last note and closing the laptop. 

"What's so funny?" Dean asks, just as Cas and Charlie make a thoroughly disruptive entrance, complete with a gust of wind and swirls of dried leaves. Charlie is laughing and Cas looks… well, like Cas. Confused, slightly amused, and yet somehow more somber than the occasion calls for.

"But why?" he asks, and Charlie laughs, shutting the door and patting Cas patronizingly on the shoulder. 

"Because that's the way superpowers work when you're not an angel," she answers, and Sam turns around to smile at them both as they clomp down the stairs. 

Dean wishes he could just be happy for them, the way Sam seems to be, but he can't get over how wrong it feels, and not even just on Charlie's part; something isn't right with Cas, he doesn't take to new people like this, at least not in Dean's experience.

"Done?" Charlie asks, taking the laptop from in front of Sam. Dean frowns. He hadn't even noticed that Sam was typing on Charlie's computer. He is slipping.

"Yeah," Sam says. "It's good."

"What's good?" Dean asks, glancing up at Cas to see if he has any idea what the hell Sam and Charlie are up to.

"My new story," Charlie says. "Sam betaed for me." She pats Sam's knee and he smiles at her, clearly as in love with her as Dean is. She's the best thing that's happened to them in the last couple of years. Maybe the only good thing.

"You what now?" Before Sam can answer, he follows up with, "Story?" He looks back at Charlie. "You write?"

"Well, not heavy duty," she says, shrugging. "Just a little fanfic here and there."

Dean stares at her, wondering if she's actually going to speak English when she opens her mouth again.

"Oh come on," she says, snapping her fingers at him. "It's a valid form of self-expression and connecting with art that speaks to you."

Sam snorts. "I don't know that you can call Supernatural 'art,'" he says, and now Dean's completely lost. 

"It is the highest art," Cas says in all seriousness. "It is the word of God, through the lens of a prophet."

Dean can feel reality slipping away from him, clearly someone laced his eggs with the brown acid this morning. "Stop," he says. "Just, stop. You are not talking about Chuck's books."

"Yeah," she says, smiling. "I can't help it – they're a really…" She glances at Cas and then back to Dean. "…riveting read."

Dean just sits there with his mouth open for a long moment. He doesn't even know how to comprehend what's going on here. He turns on Sam. "You're encouraging her?"

He shrugs. "I like her stories. They have a ring of truth about them."

"Dude, that's because she _knows_ us!" He stands up, kicking his chair back so he can pace a little, think about this. A terrible thought occurs to him. "You don't write about things that have actually happened, do you?"

She bites her lip. "Well, I just wanted to be part of the story," she says. "And I mean, I _was_ , wasn't I, with Dick Roman? A girl needs a few accolades of her own."

Dean keeps looking at them all, trying to figure out how this is happening. Cas is smiling, a weird enough look on his face, and Sam's got his sad smile going on again, which Dean doesn't even know what to do with anymore, and Charlie, well. She looks embarrassed but determined. 

"Don't," Dean says, feeling oddly betrayed. "This is our lives," Dean says. "It was bad enough to have them all written out by a prophet, but now this?"

Charlie frowns, and anger flashes in her eyes. "You shouldn't be embarrassed about what you do, Dean. You're _heroes_. Jeez, can't blame a girl for wanting you to have a happy ending, can you?"

"Yeah, but it's our happy ending," Dean says, gesturing to include Sam. "We'll figure it out for ourselves, all right?"

"Doubt it," Sam mumbles, pushing away from the table.

"Where are you going?" It's more snappish than he wants to be with Sam, but he's a little peeved that not only is his brother _not_ against this, he's actually _helping_ her. 

"Nap," Sam answers, lumbering off toward his room. "You make me tired, Dean."

Charlie scowls at Dean and flounces off after Sam. "Sometimes you're a real ass, Winchester," she throws over her shoulder.

Cas is still rooted to the spot where he was when the argument started, a few feet away from the table. "I should…" 

Dean's pretty sure he stops talking because he has no idea what it is that he should do. Dean shakes his head. He doesn't have a clue either. What are you supposed to do when your sort-of little sister writes stories about your apocalyptic adventures and… 

And does what with them? She can't honestly…

He stalks over to the other table, flipping open his own laptop as he sits. He finds the Supernatural fan site easy enough, looking through usernames attached to the archive. As soon as he sees Cassidy Asimov, he knows. He clicks on her most recent post and stops short when he looks at the tags. Destiel. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the hell that is.

He stares at the title – _I, Castiel_ – and can't look away. It was posted last night.

"Did you know about this?"

Cas approaches the table, looking over Dean's shoulder at the screen. "Yes."

Dean feels betrayed all over again, trying to understand how family can feel like it's okay to mess with this stuff. They're supposed to understand that what's out there already is too much, and not really anyone else's business anyway.

"And you don't care?"

Castiel doesn't answer and when Dean looks up at him, he's smiling. "I find I enjoy entertaining the possibilities."

Apparently Cas figures out that what he should do is leave, because he turns around and heads down to the sleeping rooms. Maybe he's going to comfort Sam too, and they're all going to take a nap together.

Dean stares at the link a little longer, willing himself to close the window and walk away. He doesn't want to know. He really, really doesn't.

He clicks the link.

~~~

Charlie sips her coffee, staring at her latest fic. Sam gave really good comments, and it's probably her best one yet, but she's a lot less certain about this than she was yesterday. The way Dean looked at her like she'd stabbed him in the back…

She saves the edited version to her hard drive and closes the laptop. She hadn't been sure, reading the books, that she'd guessed everything between Dean and Castiel correctly, but as soon as she'd met Castiel, she'd known her instincts were right. They're both pretty majorly broken, but they fit in a way that she's only ever seen happy couples fit. Mostly they're a slow-burn sort of thing, where the people involved don't even realize what's going on until it hits them over the head. So what if she likes imagining what sort of anvil is going to land on Dean and make him realize he's in love with a not-angel-guy? She can hardly be blamed for trying to figure out how he's finally going to get his happy ending.

She wishes she could do the same for Sam, but he's broken in an entirely different way, one that's not going to be fixed by falling in love.

"Good morning," Castiel says, startling her out of her thoughts. She looks up at him, already smiling, when she sees Dean close on his heels – too close, really – and… _holy crap_. 

"Morning," Charlie says cautiously. She smiles tentatively at Dean, and he smiles back at her, though he's shaking his head.

"You better not write about this," Dean says, and the smile on Castiel's face could light up a continent. 

She can't help it, she runs over to Dean to give him a hug. Castiel puts a hand in the middle of her back, warm and comforting. "I think I've decided to retire," she tells him. "Suddenly all my ideas for getting my favorite couple together have dried up."

~~~


End file.
